Saturday, July 23, 2011

A Wall Street Journal columnist has advised people to “start stockpiling food” and an ABC News Report says “there are worrying signs appearing in the United States where some … locals are beginning to hoard supplies.” Now there’s concern that the U.S. government may be competing with consumers for stocks of storable food.

“We’re told that the feds bought the entire container of canned butter when it hit the California docks. (Something’s up!),” said officials at Best Prices Storable Foods in an advisory to customers.

Spokesman Bruce Hopkins told WND he also has had trouble obtaining No. 10 cans of various products from one of the world’s larger suppliers of food stores, Oregon Freeze Dry.

He said a company official told him on the telephone when he discussed the status of his order that it was because the government had purchased massive quantities of products, leaving none for other customers.

That, however, was denied by Oregon Freeze Dry. In a website statement, the company confirmed it cannot assure supplying some items to customers.

“We regret to inform you Oregon Freeze Dry cannot satisfy all Mountain House #10 can orders and we have removed #10 cans from our website temporarily,” the company tells frustrated customers. “The reason for this is sales of #10 cans have continued to increase. OFD is allocating as much production capacity as possible to this market segment, but we must maintain capacity for our other market segments as well.”

The company statement continues, “We want to clarify inaccurate information we’ve seen on the Internet. This situation is not due to sales to the government domestically or in Iraq. We do sell products to this market, but we also sell other market segments … The reason for this decision is solely due to an unprecedented sales spike in #10 cans sales.

“We expect this situation to be necessary for several months although this isn’t a guarantee. We will update this information as soon as we know more. We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your patience. We sincerely hope you will continue to be Mountain House customers in the future,” the company statement said.

But Hopkins wasn’t backing away from his concerns.

“The government just came in and said they’re buying it. They did pay for it,” he told WND about the summertime shipment of long-term storage butter. “They took it and no one else could have it.

“We don’t know why. The feds then went to freeze dried companies, and bought most of their canned stock,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Oregon Freeze Dry, sales manager Melanie Cornutt, told WND that the increasing demand for food that can be stored has been on the rise since Hurricane Katrina devastated large sections of the Gulf Coast, cutting off ordinary supply routes.

“We are currently out of stock on our cans. We are not selling any of our cans,” she confirmed.

She then raised the issue of government purchases herself.

“We do sell to the government [but] it is not the reason [for company sales limits],” she said.

Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency told WND whatever government agency is buying in a surge it isn’t them. They reported a stockpile of about six million meals which has not changed significantly in an extended period.

Will 2011 be the year that we point to as the beginning of the great global food crisis? Food prices are soaring, supplies are very tight and already we have seen some very intense food protests flare up around the globe this year. When people don't have enough to eat, they tend to become very desperate, and unfortunately it looks like the global food situation is not going to improve much any time soon.

Right now the world is really struggling to feed itself, and with each passing day there are even more mouths to feed. It is being projected that the population of the world will reach 9 billion people by the year 2050. There are already way too many people starving to death around the globe, and unfortunately starvation is only going to become more rampant as food supplies get even tighter. Some of the key food producing provinces in China are facing their worst drought in 200 years. Flooding has absolutely devastated agricultural production in Australia and Brazil this winter.

Russia is still trying to recover from the horrific drought of last summer. Global weather patterns have gone haywire over the past 12 months, and this is putting immense pressure on a global food system that was already on the verge of a major breakdown.

Right now a desperate scramble for food is beginning. Quite a few nations that used to be huge food exporters are now importing a lot of their food. Prices for staples such as wheat, corn and soybeans are absolutely soaring, and the UN is projecting that they will continue to rise rapidly throughout 2011.

Unless something dramatically changes, the global food situation is only going to get tighter and tighter and tighter as this decade rolls along.

So who is going to decide who gets fed and who doesn't?

As food prices continue to rise, will we start to see more food riots erupt all over the world as starving populations demand answers from their governments?

What is going to happen if weather patterns get even worse or if we have a string of really bad natural disasters?

What is going to happen if we experience a really bad global economic collapse?

Right now these are just the "birth pains", but if things get much worse we could be looking at a horrific food shortage that will rock the globe.

The following are 14 facts that make you wonder if the coming global food shortage has already begun....

#10 China is busy preparing for a "severe, long-lasting drought" that is projected to have a huge impact on several provinces.http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=12875276 In fact, Chinese state media says that the eastern province of Shandong is dealing with the worst drought it has seen in 200 years. The provinces being affected by this severe drought grow approximately two-thirds of the wheat in China. The following is a very short video news report about the horrible drought that China is going through right now....

#14 As food has become increasingly scarce around the world, many companies have started using whatever kinds of "fillers" that they can think of in their "food" products. For example, Raw Story is reporting that some companies in China have actually been mass producing "fake rice" that is made partly of plastic. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/report-china-fake-rice-plastic/# According to one Chinese Restaurant Association official, eating three bowls of this fake rice is the equivalent of consuming an entire plastic bag.

Let us pray that this is not the beginning of a major global food crisis, because hunger and starvation are horrible things.

Starving to death is a fate that nobody should ever have to go through.

So, let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare as if we will be facing the worst.

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